Monday, September 12, 2011

All about spatial literacy... and free on-line













Left image: An English village streetscape in Suffolk, United Kingdom.
Right image: Somewhere but nowhere to go: milling around a Paris railway station.

Related sites to the Spatialworlds project
Spatialworlds website
21st Century Geography Google Group
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website
Geography Teachers' Association of South Australia website
Email contact
manning@chariot.net.au

Where am I??
Adelaide, Australia: S: 34º 55' E: 138º 36'


Have a play with these two – all about spatial literacy

ArcGIS Online - a way to go on-line
* ArcGIS Online is a cloud-based geospatial content management system for storing and managing maps, data, and other geospatial information. Built on Esri's cloud infrastructure, it gives you access to geographic content shared and registered by Esri and GIS users around the world.
With ArcGIS Online, you can
• Create and share maps that can be accessed by anyone through a browser, a mobile device, ArcGIS for Desktop, or a custom application.
• Access and discover thousands of free maps, datasets, services, tools and other geospatial content.
• Manage geospatial content through an easy-to-use catalog of items or groups.
• Share your content publically, with specific groups, or keep it private.

* Have a play with ArcGIS Explorer on-line. Well worth the time to see that here is a GIS viewer with street basemaps, satellite images, aerial photography and the capacity to digitise, import Shapefiles and much more. All on-line, with no required software to load up on your computer and all free – all you need is the internet to do some amazing GIS. This is the new world of GIS delivery; on-line and user-friendly. You will also find pre-made map projects on the Brisbane floods, active hazards in Japan, glacial retreat in Alaska, to name just a few.
* In particular make you own map following the instructions
* ‘How to us it’ videos are available free on the ESRI site to support your exploration of ArcGIS Explorer on-line.
* Think about signing in to the on-line ESRI environment to get even more functionality.
* Even go the extra yards and play with the featured maps and apps from the ArcGIS Community


A new dimension

A great resource for developing spatial awareness
. Interesting to apply to your area or known world landmarks. All about spatial literacy. In particular it is an interesting tool to incorporate spatial literacy and awareness with historical and contemporary things students are familiar with or studying.
Dimensions is an experimental prototype for the BBC. They want to bring home the human scale of events and places in history. The D-Day landing beaches measured from London to Norfolk in the UK. How far would the Titanic stretch down your street? Dimensions simply juxtaposes the size of historical events with your home and neighbourhood, overlaying important places, events and things on a satellite view of where you live. Certain "Dimensions" can be transformed into short walks, so you can get a physical appreciation of the distances involved.

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